Billion-dollar industry endorses mind-altering drugs

What if we proactively ask questions about our health and well being? Sounds strange questioning doctor’s recommendations, especially when considering antipsychotic drugs treating mental conditions.

Is this an assault on the pharmaceutical industry and over medicating in America? Absolutely not. Medicine has a legitimate place in the treatment of illnesses, diseases and life-threatening conditions. The billion-dollar question is: “Are we over using medicine?” As Americans, are we the most medicated, overstimulated people on the planet?

There are small portions of people with medical conditions justifying the use of psychotropic drugs including marijuana. Before dismissing this controversial subject, imagine your child suffers severe seizures and you discovered prescribed doses of medical marijuana completely controls them. My middle son has taken Levothyroxine all his life.

The point is there are legitimate conditions warranting the medicinal model as a comprehensive approach to wellness. A prime example is the book, “Stoned: A Doctor’s Case For Medical Marijuana” by David Casarett, M.D.

Medicine has an appropriate place, but it is overused in the Western model. Americans are simply addicted to medicine.

It’s not just taxpayers who pick up the tab. The biggest losers are families as the basic fabric of society is eroded by conditioning and normalization of over dependence upon highly addictive stimulants, which can have potentially serious side effects.

What antipsychotic drug has ever had clinical trials supporting their use among children? None. Yet we allow adult prescription drugs to be handed out like candy to kids. Just visit the average elementary school before lunch and ask: “What the line outside the office is for?” Those kids didn’t forget their lunch money – they are being medicated.

Two major questions must be answered before anyone goes on long-term treatment with drugs. What’s the long-term risk verses long-term benefits? Also, what are we using the medicine to treat in the first place? Are we treating biological issues or using medicine to treat sociological or environmental conditions?

I had a 1985 Ford Escort I drove for three years. Working part time while a full-time student, sometimes I ran out of gas. A farmer pulled up and started pouring fuel into the Escort. He seemed pleased with his good deed. Then he informed me he put diesel fuel in my car as he laughingly instructed, “She’ll smoke a little but she’ll get’cha where your goin’!”

The car ran the duration of my college experience, but had I continuously ran diesel it would have destroyed it.

My medication model is comparable to my car running on diesel. It was acceptable under the circumstances as a short-term solution only – never as a long-term possibility for treating the temporary problem.

Thus arises the real point of tension: Do antipsychotic drugs have a place in the treatment of mental problems? Yes, but they have limits and should be used short term as part of a long-term comprehensive plan addressing real environmental or social conditions. We must realize the long-term effects of many drugs is equivalent to running gasoline cars on diesel. The long-term effects are always costly and the risk may outweigh any temporary benefits.

The farmer knew diesel in my car would be OK and no one else benefited from his act of kindness. Honestly ask who benefits when families are placed on long-term pharmaceutical regiments. Are doctors and professionals laboring under a billion-dollar mindset really able to see as clearly as the farmer?

We better answer this question because we’re not talking about a replaceable car. We’re placing the lives of our children in the hands of someone who has a short-term paradigm – seeing no problem running diesel fuel in a gasoline engine.

Especially if it’s not their car.